


oh, it's you

by valonqarth



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Cobb and Issa-Or MLM WLW solidarity, M/M, No beta we die like younglings, Religious Guilt, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The Force Ships It (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29839056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valonqarth/pseuds/valonqarth
Summary: AU where everyone has the first thing their soulmate says to them written on their bodies."What brings you here, stranger?""I have been searching for you for many parsecs."Cobb wasn't expecting to find his starfaring soulmate in his cantina wanting to rob him of his armour, but the universe is weird like that. Din is a busy man and doesn't have time for this.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 19
Kudos: 83





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pure self-indulgence tbh don't think too hard about the logistics of soul marks  
> I mashed some Aftermath canon into it, but don't worry about it. I just needed some Issa-Or galpal deputy

It had been a comfort to Cobb, in the years of his youth, to know that someone out there was coming for him. _I have been searching for you for many parsecs._ He didn’t know why or when, but such was the nature of things.

His upbringing on Tatooine had been bleak, to say the least. Slavery and mining in the service of the Hutts. A man from another planet was a thrilling thought, a fantasy of escapism in a harsh environment. Cobb’s imagination strove to fill in those many parsecs and think about what the other half of his soul had seen and maybe even adventures had. He could be anyone, a prince on some faraway planet, a mechanic in the next sector over, anyone.

He had often considered leaving the small town of Mos Pelgo and getting as far from the sandy rock of Tatooine as he could get. If he'd have held onto those silicax crystals, perhaps he could've afforded something good enough to get him to a ship. But why bother? He was fairly sure that any other planet had just as much capacity for scum and villainy as his sandpit back home. At least on Tatooine he could be useful.

No, he would stay with his feet planted firmly. A grounding force for his people, and Maker help anyone that would try to move him from guarding Mos Pelgo. Perhaps his future soulmate would show him the stars one day, but for now, he was content to wait. Let him search, and find Cobb where he belonged.

Cobb hadn’t really felt lonely in Mos Pelgo since he had established himself as a lawman, he had a sense of purpose now. He had a town that needed him every day for anything from petty disputes to supply runs. He had a jetpack to master. There was always something to keep him busy in this town and always a friendly face in the cantina. He was even thinking of asking Issa-Or to be his official deputy, as far as an unofficial marshall could have one.

Sometimes, when the twin suns had long set, Cobb would sit on his roof and gaze up at the stars. He could trace the back of his neck, just where it met his back, and lightly touch his mark. He was glad that the mark hadn’t been marred by scars. He didn’t often see his own back, but he knew the raised scar had only narrowly missed the words, with one point of a star almost touching the aurebesh script. Perhaps the bastard that branded him showed some mercy in that moment, but probably not.

It was late in the evening in the cantina. He had come in from his daily rounds of walking the town later than usual. The old widow across the way from Cobb had asked him to come and take a look at her vaporator, and a quick check had turned into a series of issues trying to fix the machinery that looked older than him. 

Issa-Or was waiting for him at his table, a glass of spotchka already poured.

“We need to talk,” she said as he collapsed into the chair opposite her with a groan.

“Oh no,” he said, picking up his drink and taking a sip. Cobb held up a hand to his chest in mock hurt.“You sound like you’re about to dump me, darlin’.”

“If I was leaving you behind, I’d steal your bike in the middle of the night without a word. You know that,” she said musically. “I’m thinking of going back to Mos Eisley _for a little while_ , see what I can find out about what’s going on out there. What do you think?” 

“That’s a good idea. It would be good to keep an ear out for news from Jabba’s palace, or any Republic intervention, or whoever wants this planet,” Cobb said. “Plenty more sights to see out there than here, too.”

Issa-Or nodded and smiled.

Their friendship had become an easy one. She had earned his respect after he saw her break a man’s wrist in a cantina in Mos Eisley. The twi’lek had recognised him for what he was, a runaway slave like her, and he had offered her a place in Mos Pelgo. At first, she had stayed with him in his spare bedroom while the town set her up with her own homestead. It had only been for a couple of weeks, but he sometimes missed having someone around the house when he made caf in the morning.

A few more drinks in them both and the regular after-work crowd had wound down for the evening. Issa-Or rubbed her thumb absently against the mark on her wrist. Her other half hadn’t been so lucky as Issa-Or and Cobb. Cobb caught her staring at it, but knew better than to bring up the subject. Everyone on Tatooine had lost someone, especially in Mos Pelgo. 

“So what are you gonna do, Vanth? When your spaceman comes knocking for you.”

Cobb frowns. “I don’t know. Offerin’ to buy him a drink sounds like a good start,” he said, raising his glass to her in a mock toast.

“Well, that would be the least you could do if he came all the way to this rock for your sorry ass,” she chuckled. “Are you gonna leave with him?”

“Not while this town needs me,” he said. 

“And what do you need?” she said, with a slight frown. 

Fuck, he didn’t know. Freedom, a home, someone else to fill the house he built in the sand before the desert rose to reclaim it and him? He was getting too old for this.

“Another round,” he declared. He rose and headed to the bar, tugging on his scarf distractedly. 

* * *

Din hadn't really been that concerned about his soulmate mark. It wasn't a particularly romantic one or even a memorable one. He had overheard in cantinas stories of different kinds of meetings between soulmates, ranging from simple greetings to an uncreative "you're my soulmate?". Honestly, someone asking you what you were doing in a particular place wasn't exactly uncommon - especially for a man in his line of work.

 _What brings you here, stranger?_ A bounty puck and a ship in need of repair money.

Din had sometimes wondered what they would be like - if they would be a Mandalorian, if they would be human, if they would be a man or a woman or something else entirely. He tried not to hope his soulmate would be anything, as he knew that wouldn't lead him anywhere good.

A _soulmate_ , though. If he really was meant to be some mystical match he would be destined to spend his life with, he couldn't imagine them being anything but Mandalorian. He had intended to live to serve his people and provide for the foundlings in the covert's care, and he couldn't comprehend being joined to anyone other than one who understood his creed. 

Eventually, the older Din got the less he cared about finding the special person the universe had picked out for him. The universe was unfair and didn't owe anyone anything. The whole concept, the tattoos, the romance, it was a part of everyday life for sure but it wasn’t in every moment. You heard about people finding their soulmates, you could sometimes see someone's tattoo peeking out from under a sleeve, holodramas that Din certainly didn’t watch obsessed over the shocking reveal of seeing your words on the skin of another. 

Romantic soulmates were the norm and highly revered, but platonic ones were reasonably common enough. In the Covert, he had heard stories of soulmates who were comrades, who fought in battle as one, who loved each other fiercely and were sacred. 

He hadn't shown anyone his tattoo which was scrawled across his shoulder. He didn't hide it, but nobody really needed to see it or had the opportunity to. It was always there, protected beneath a beskar pauldron. His soul was, as it should be, encased in beskar. 

Young and foolish, he told Xi'an what it read once, plied with alcohol and the thought that perhaps the knowledge that she wasn't his would drive her away. She didn't seem to mind and was content to have what she could of him regardless. She teased him with elaborate tales of Din, the big scary bounty hunter, falling in love with a quarry and snatching them away.

Part of him wished his words had matched with Omera on Sorgan. The words of another curled elegantly around her wrist - Winta’s father, he knew. He didn’t think that would stop him from being happy. If he wanted to, he could have stayed. Defying the Creed would’ve been worse than defying whatever part of the universe had left him with a question on his skin. The fact that their marks didn’t match didn’t make him leave, but the knowledge that it wasn’t _meant to be_ softened the hurt just a little bit, he told himself.

Finding the kid had changed him. The more he travelled with the little womp rat, the more he adored him, and his heart had never been so full. It was fucking terrifying, to love something so much. Every day was a new challenge, through learning how to care for something so helpless and fighting off half the galaxy. He had never even attempted to keep a plant alive before, let alone a kid.

He didn’t know what he would do without him now. With the Covert gone, he had no immediate purpose other than the Child, only to find more Mandalorians to lead him and his foundling to the Jedi. 

Din had been to Tatooine several times over the years and he’d never heard about another Mandalorian before. Tatooine was the type of place you visited but never stayed longer than you needed to. He didn’t know what a Mandalorian would hope to find in the desert, especially since the Hutt’s were out of business. Still, it would be good to find another of his kind, perhaps someone who would understand him and help him on his seemingly impossible quest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV is all over the place but so are their feelings ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

The Weequay at the bar didn’t even seem to know what a Mandalorian was. The day was hot and dry, same as every day on this dustball Din supposed, and Din’s patience was not doing well. He didn’t want to find out he’d come all this way for _nothing_.

"What brings you here, stranger?" said the marshal, in the doorway of the cantina.

Something in Din's chest tightened as he saw the man. Din frowned in his helmet. Something wasn't right about this. The man in front of him was wearing Mandalorian armour for sure, but it fit him all wrong. Still, he was thrilled to see a familiar face, a face wrapped in beskar. He knew this must be the man that he was looking for, that his contact's information about another Mandalorian must be solid.

"I have been searching for you for many parsecs," he said. The other man's posture shifted and he tapped on the bar to order a bottle of spotchka and two glasses. 

"Well, looks like you found me," the man said. He sat down at the table in front of them.

The words the man had said before finally clicked. His soulmate.

Din's breath caught in his throat a little as he stared him down. _Fuck_. He really hadn't been prepared for this - he wasn't looking for this person, _his_ person? Well, he was, but-

The man reached up and removed his helmet, placing it casually on the table as though it was the simplest thing in the world to show off his face. 

Din’s instinctive reaction had been to avert his gaze from the other man. He couldn’t stop himself for long, however. The audacity of this man. The curiosity in Din’s chest.

He put it down to the heat of two suns and the phantom ache of his tattoo under his pauldron for thinking this man could ever be Mandalorian. 

The man’s silver hair was pushed back and flattened slightly from the helmet. He smiled as he poured Din a drink, his exposed fingers placing it down in front of him.

Din stared him down. He watched the man look him up and down where he stood. The man was definitely attractive. His beard was beautiful, especially when Din thought of his own patchy hair. Din could imagine how it would feel against his skin. He really wished he had kept it on. This was unfair.

The teachings he was raised with were gnawing at the back of his mind. The way was clear - the beskar’gam kept his soul contained, kept it within him. That was why dar’manda were so abhorrent, they had forfeited their souls. His teachings had questioned whether non-Mandalorians had souls in the same way. He hadn’t really thought about it that hard, the whole business of sharing his soul had been low on his list of priorities as a young bounty hunter. A false Mandalorian, a false soulmate? 

The thoughts came to him easily, like an automatic trained response. When he stopped to think about it, however, it didn’t seem false. He hadn’t thought this way about Omera, but he knew it wasn’t going to be her. The reality of this situation was far more terrifying. If the other half of Din’s soul wasn’t really Mandalorian, what did that mean for his half?

It was as though the man before him had separated into two faces: the battered green Mandalorian one and his real face with its easy going smile. These just starkly emphasised what this man was not.

Din frowned. Now wasn’t the time for an existential crisis. The complicated bit could wait. Soulmate or not, this marshal disrespected that armour. 

  
  


"Take it off," he said firmly. "Or I will."

 _Shit_. Cobb thought.

He knew that his starfaring soulmate had been coming for him. He'd entertained romantic notions when he was green and hopeful of a man coming simply to find his soulmate and whisk him away. Realistically, he knew this wouldn't be the case but he sure as hell didn't think his soulmate would be coming all this way just to shoot him and take his armour off his corpse. Much less romantic, he thought.

Cobb reasoned that either the Mandalorian hadn't noticed that Cobb was his soulmate or simply didn't care. He stared down at the T-visor looking for something like recognition but could see nothing in the dark shade. Vanth didn’t know much about the Mandalorian view on soul marks, but he seemed to be right in his assessment on how they would perceive him wearing their sacred metal.

The Mandalorian was willing to kill for this armour. Cobb was willing, too. His attachment to this gear and what it could bring him had seen him shoot a man just to get his hands on it. That was before all the good the armour had done for him and for Mos Pelgo. The armour was more a part of him than this man who just walked into his town. Still, shooting one’s soulmate was never going to be a good idea.

"You wanna do this in front of the kid?" he said, raising an eyebrow at the Mandalorian's son. The child stared up at him with big unafraid eyes. A cute kid. Cobb hoped he’d live long enough to found out how he ended up with this bounty hunter.

"He's seen worse," the Mandalorian said.

“Right here then?”

“Right here.”

Cobb sighed and rose from his seat, kicking the chair behind him away. He stared him down, his cheek twitched in anticipation, trying to work out if this was really how it was going to be.

He felt the ground stir beneath them, a familiar churn of the sand that he felt through his boots. 

And, well, perhaps the universe does intervene in dastardly ways. It simply would not do to have a shootout with your soulmate in a cantina now would it? Cobb wasn’t sure if that was how the force works, but he didn’t know enough to say it _wasn’t_.

Soon enough, a bargain was struck. “You help me kill it and I’ll give you the armour.”

He didn’t need the Mandalorian to kill it for him. What kind of leader would he be, sending a bounty hunter after the dragon that terrorised _his_ town and _his_ people? He didn’t need a bounty, he needed a partner. This Mando didn’t need to take his offer. Cobb was quick on the draw, but he had never shot a man in beskar and from his own experience of being shot at in beskar he didn’t favour his chances of getting in the one hit he needed. 

The Mandalorian stared at him for a bit and nodded. Perhaps, under the shiny metal, he was a softie - the little green bean at his feet certainly suggested so.

It was best if this Mandalorian knew what he was up against and they set out to find the dragon’s lair. As they sped across the desert, Cobb could feel the lingering tension. It was difficult for him to tell if the tension was really tension, or just Cobb’s own anxiety about pointing out the obvious yet unspoken thing that had happened. 

When faced with not knowing what to say, Cobb turned to his speciality and began to tell Din the story of how he had come to own the beskar and how it had given him his life and freedom. He was tempted, out of habit to embellish and exaggerate, smooth over the cracks in the story, to make the story more interesting. The thought of lying to this man seemed absurd, pointless even. He wouldn’t persuade this man to let him keep his armour.

Din just listened to him talk over the thrum of the speeders. He had a way of speaking that got Din lost in the story. Cobb was a man who had clearly seen a lot, just as Din had. Cobb, however, seemed more certain in his ability to speak the horrors aloud. 

Cobb continued recounting his journey with the armour. “You wouldn’t believe how times I almost died trying to work out how to use that damn jetpack. Also, I think you might be my soulmate.”

He added on the last bit without shifting the tone in his voice. Din’s hands faltered on the speeder bike handlebars so briefly that Cobb wasn’t sure he caught it. He stared for a moment at Cobb’s face. The man smiled, wide and nervous, as he looked at Din. He reached back a hand to tap two fingers twice where he knew the words lay beneath the fabric of his scarf.

“I… noticed,” Din said evenly.

“... Cool,” Cobb responded. “Kid hungry?” 

Din nodded, happy for the change of subject. Cobb reached into his pack at his side and threw a snack to Din. The child cooed gleefully as Din passed it back to him. 

Din was glad to have Cobb as an ally rather than a foe. He was enjoying the man’s company, despite the circumstances. The mission came first, however. The kid was depending on him to get him to his people. That didn’t mean that Din wasn’t allowed to enjoy the view for a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rejected lines:  
> "no pressure but I might be your soulmate xoxo do with that info as you wish"  
> "WAIT THAT'S ILLEGAL"  
> "oh no he's hot"
> 
> next bit probably early next week :)
> 
> edit: omg i didn't mean to make Din so rude here but like HES BUSY N GOING THRU IT OK


	3. Chapter 3

After their negotiations with the Tuskens, it was time to set up camp for the night. The two of them set up their tents lent to them by the Tuskens and returned to the warmth and low light of the fire. The child dozed lightly in the crook of Din’s arm. 

Din looked over at Cobb. The dim firelight was making it easier to hide and feel protected. The light shining in Cobb’s hair was also enough to make him want to tell him a story of his own. The Mandalorian told him how he came to find The Child, and how Jawas ransacking his ship led him to a fight with a mudhorn. With caution, he explained how the kid had helped him in battle and the emergence of his special powers. 

Cobb listened carefully, nodding occasionally, taking in every word. It was the most he had heard Mando speak all day and he wasn’t going to interrupt. He didn’t have the same knack for weaving together a narrative like Cobb did and his account was simply a series of solid statements. There was no bullshitting or creativity with his speech.

“I have been tasked with returning The Child to his kind. He belongs with the Jedi. I had been hoping I would find some other Mandalorians to lead me to one. Instead, I was led to you.”

Cobb soon understood the mission at hand for the man and what Mando needed to do. He watched as Mando gently shifted the child in his arms, and wrapped him up in the thick fabric of his cape. There was such love and devotion in the way he interacted with the kid, he found it hard to imagine he could give him up. Cobb had barely interacted with the kid and even he would be hard pressed to see him separated from Mando and given to some wizards. Whichever way this mission would go, he knew it would need to go on without him. This Mando had travelled far to get to him, but he would go to the ends of the galaxy for this little guy. 

When Din finished his story, they remained quiet. Din was silent in the way of one confident that he had said what he needed to and didn’t feel the need to fill a silence.

“You gotta tell me, Mando,” Cobb said, shifting to sit closer to Din like they were sharing a secret and he didn’t want the sand to hear it. “Is yours on your forehead or something?”

“No. It’s on my shoulder.” Din gestured with his helmet to indicate which one.

Cobb hummed. He raised his hand tentatively towards Din’s left pauldron, his eyes on the helmet visor for any sign of protest. Din didn’t flinch away as Cobb gently ran his fingertips over the silver beskar. His gaze shifted and he was almost transfixed by the metal shine in the firelight, imagining what his words might look like on the skin beneath.

“Is it a problem?” Cobb asked softly. “Having me?”

“A lawman?”

“A non-Mandalorian.”

Din frowned. “No. Not a problem. I didn’t hope you were anything, I just kinda assumed you would be Mandalorian.”

Cobb sat back and put his hands on his knees. 

“Well, from what I can tell Mandalorians are few and far between. At least, you’re the first I ever met. Maybe the Force decided if they couldn’t find you a noble warrior riding a mythosaur, an old gunslinger in salvaged beskar would do fine enough.”

Cobb hoped there was a smile under that helmet. 

“I am glad to meet you. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression I was disappointed,” Din said in a low voice. 

“For the record, I hoped you’d be handsome and good in a fight. I think I got both.” 

“You can’t even see my face.”

Cobb shrugged. “I know I’m right. Although, you told me you got your ass handed to you by  _ Jawas _ .”

Din groaned at the reminder.

The marshal didn’t want to ask too much about the Creed in case he overstepped. He had learned a lot today about cultural boundaries and didn’t want to spoil his progress. He was at least right, it seemed, that whatever rule kept that helmet on Mando’s face would not make an exception for him. He could respect that. This far out in the Outer Rim, people had their quirks and customs brought from wherever they came from in the galaxy. He should’ve just drank the damn melon water. 

Din must have seen the curious look on Cobb’s face. “What do you want to ask me?”

He had a lot of questions that he had considered asking, but none of them felt appropriate. Either too big for a man he just met that morning ( _ can I kiss you? Is this soulmate thing giving you a platonic vibe or-? _ ) or almost childish small talk ( _ what’s your favourite colour? _ ). 

“Nothing,” he said, a little too quickly.

“Vanth. I won’t be mad.”

“ _ Cobb _ , if you would, partner,” he corrected. He scratched at his beard. “I’d like to know more about the armour. I’m assuming you can’t take it off around others?”

“No living thing may see my face. I keep the armour on as much as I am able to, I take it off when necessary,” he explained.

Din waited for the ubiquitous follow-up question people had. He had felt Vanth’s eyes on him, trying to map out what he thought Din would look like beneath the armour. Would it be weird of him to just blurt out  _ yes the helmet stays on during sex _ to avoid the conversation? Probably. But Vanth didn’t ask about loopholes, exceptions or ways to get him.

“I understand. Do you ever want to take it off?” Cobb said. He couldn’t imagine it being comfortable, Cobb had only been able to cope with the helmet on for a few hours at a time. Still, wearing it all the time would make it easy soon enough.

“No,” Din said immediately. He remembered gently touching Omera’s wrists as she moved to remove his helmet. 

“I’ve considered it,” he admitted, a little quieter. “If I take the helmet off I can’t put it back on. I wouldn’t be Mandalorian. It’s part of me,” Din explained. He added, with some shame, “I shouldn’t have even thought about it.”

“There’s no trouble in questioning. Considering it and then choosing not to is good, I think. It means you’re not keeping it on because you have to, but because you want to.”

Din sighed. “We don’t get to choose much in this galaxy.” 

Cobb thought about their situation and what it meant for him to be independent. He wondered what Iss would be doing in Mos Eisley now, combining her sense of duty to protect their people with her freedom to get away from it for a while. He didn't know when she would return.

“When I got my freedom, my instinct was to run. Then I thought about it and realised, I want to be here.” Cobb lightly dragged his foot over the sand as he spoke. 

He had assumed, based on the stern confidence of the man as he stood looking at him in the cantina, that Din was a man in control. Wherever it was he came from, he called the shots. Now, it seemed Cobb was wrong - this was a man out of his depth, led on some quest and bound by duty. 

He had hoped, to some degree, the marks that bound them would make it easy for Cobb to suss him out. He hoped he would have more time to work out the intricacies of his movement and the tilt of his helmet before he would inevitably leave with his armour.

The baby stirred in Din’s arms and cooed softly in his sleep. Din sighed and realised it was time for bed. They couldn’t sit out here all night.

“We should rest. There will be a lot to do tomorrow,” he said, rising from his seat.

“Good night, Mando,” Cobb said.

“Good night, Cobb,” replied Din, ducking into his small tent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> time to ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT IT   
> I've skipped a lot but really I just didn't want to rewrite the entire episode

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure about this one but I had to write it
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr, I'm demisexuallupin
> 
> Comments make me smile :)


End file.
